10 Readers Share Their Decluttering Secrets

We all have that one friend whose house is always perfectly put-together, not a stray piece of paper or unused item to be found. What's his or her secret? For the answer, we turned to the tidiest people we know—women and men—to find out just how they keep their homes clean and clutter-free.

1. "Have a 'donate' pile and a 'throw-out' pile—you shouldn't have a 'keep' pile because if you're keeping something you should have a place for it to go, so just put it away," says Elissa.

2. "Moving," Brian says. That's certainly one way to do it!

3. "Tackle one type of thing at a time, even if it's in multiple rooms," says Erick. "For instance, all newspapers, then all other types of paper. Each needs a single place in your home."

4. "Don't just ask yourself whether you might use something in the future," Bernie suggests. "Ask yourself whether the potential replacement cost is more than the value of less clutter. Yes, I might need to buy a new landline telephone in the future, but I'd rather have that space on my storage shelf even if I might have to spend $20 again one day. I've ended up having to get new replacements for items I've donated, but that cost was well worth keeping things organized and tidy."

5. "Before I clean, I walk around with a laundry basket and pick up all the randomness," says Brittany. "After I'm done cleaning, I decide whether it has a place in my nice clean house or not."

6. "For my closet, at the end of each season, I go through and ask myself, for example, 'did I wear these shorts this season?'" Jenny says. "If the answer is 'no,' it goes in the donate pile."

7. "For our kids, when they get new toys—especially at birthdays and Christmas—we have them pick out a similar number of old toys and donate them," says J.D. "We also occasionally sneak old toys that they have not used in a long time into donation containers. Though now and then they ask what happened to such and such stuff animal!"

8. "It's all about concealed storage," Caitlin says. "Our trick is 'hiding' the clutter in containers that function as decor. So, for example, our bookshelves look super organized because all you see are pretty baskets and magazine holders and boxes with lids. If we just had a pile of magazines stacked on the shelves, our house would look cluttered—maybe even like we were hoarders!—because we have so many subscriptions!"

9. "We have a 'dump' table right when you walk in the front door," says Katrina. "On the table, there are separate catchalls for our keys, his wallet, and our mail, and a hook for my purse. That way, those little items don't end up cluttering our coffee table or the kitchen counter."

10. "I read a lot of food and home decor magazines, but rather than keep them, I tear out articles, ideas, or recipes I want to save, slip them into plastic cover sheets, and load them into fun colored binders I can store in my cabinets or on my shelves," Elizabeth says. "The binders are organized into categories based on food or decor. That way, I don't have a million magazines lying around and I get to keep the ideas I want to try for later in a way that makes them easy to find."